BANDARAYA GAZA: Israel menyatakan ia melanjutkan gencatan senjata di Gaza untuk tempoh 24 jam lagi hari ini tetapi Hamas menyatakan ia tidak akan berbuat demikian apabila menyambung tembakan roket selepas gencatan senjata kemanusiaan terdahulu selama 12 jam tamat.
Menurut seorang pegawai kerajaan Israel, Kabinet Israel "meluluskan permintaan PBB berhubung gencatan senjata kemanusiaan berlangsung sehingga tengah malam (2100 GMT) Ahad." Hamas menegaskan dalam satu kenyataan bahawa "tiada gencatan senjata kemanusiaan tanpa kereta kebal Israel berundur dari Semenanjung Gaza dan penduduk boleh kembali ke rumah mereka dan ambulans membawa jenazah bebas bergerak di Gaza".
Keputusan Israel meneruskan gencatan senjata itu bermakna ia menghentikan serangan ke atas Gaza sejak 8 Julai lalu yang sudah membunuh lebih 1,000 rakyat Palestin.
Pada masa sama 42 askar Israel maut dalam pertempuran di Gaza. - Agensi
Thousands attend pro-Palestine rally in New Zealand (PHOTOS, VIDEO)
Several thousand people are estimated to have marched through central Auckland to protest the Israeli ground invasion of Gaza, which, along with previous airstrikes, have resulted in over 300 deaths in under two weeks’ time.
Marchers with umbrellas, placards and Palestinian flags in hand
took to the heart of New Zealand’s most populous city to show
solidarity with the people of Gaza on Saturday. Estimates range
between several hundred and several thousand attendees, though
footage posted by OccupyNZ indicates the latter figure is likely
more accurate.
Chants of “Free, free Palestine!” and “One, two
three, four, we don’t want your bloody war!” rang out
through the streets as a large black and white banner with the
phrase ‘Free Palestine’ headed up the procession down Queens
Street.
Many held placards with phrases like ‘All children desire peace’
and ‘Free Gaza.’
Some, however, were far more acerbic in their criticism, defacing
the Israeli flag with a swastika or juxtaposing the Star of David
with the Nazi symbol to protest Israeli policy in the region.
There were also calls to shut down the Israeli embassy in the
city.
A counter-demonstration was also held, though no violent
altercations were reported when the two sides crossed paths near
the Britomart transport hub.
Protesters later marched to the US consulate on Customs Street to
show their opposition to the country's economic and military ties
to Israel, holding a moment of silence outside the compound for
those who have died since the ground invasion of Gaza kicked off
on Friday.
People also laid olive tree branches outside the building, one
for each life lost since the latest outbreak of violence hit the
region.
"I'm just so sad about all the innocent women and children being
killed in Palestine," Diane Sisley, who made a peace
offering outside the US consulate, told the Herald on Sunday.
"I think it's such an unequal, disgusting war."
The protest concluded with the song, 'We are all Palestinians.'
Earlier this week, foreign affairs minister Murray McCully said,
“New Zealand fully supports the United Nations Security
Council's call for an urgent ceasefire in Gaza."
Associate foreign affairs spokesman Phil Goff, meanwhile, said
Israelis, Palestinians and the international community should all
take the initiative by making the necessary compromises to
achieve lasting peace.
“The Israeli retaliation is always disproportionate," he
said in regards the most recent military escalation. "Having
been there many times I can understand why the Palestinian people
are bitter."
He added, however, that the Jewish state had a right to protect
itself from Gaza-based rocket attacks.
"Israel is a fact of life. It has a right to stable borders
and peace but so do the Palestinian people."
While the action in Auckland went off peacefully, others have
spiraled out of control.
On Friday, Israel decided to reduce its diplomatic delegation in
Turkey to the “minimum required” after violent pro-Palestinian
protests hit Israeli diplomatic missions in Ankara and Istanbul.
On Thursday, France moved to block pro-Palestinian protests
throughout the country after a previous march turned ended in
bloodshed. After 10,000 demonstrators took to the streets of
Paris on Sunday, some protesters turned violent, lobbing rocks at
police, who responded with tear gas.
Three synagogues were also assaulted by rioters, with up to 200
people trapped inside one of them. Three Jews sustained injuries
in the attacks and were sent to hospital.
However, a group of 150 men allegedly linked to the Jewish
Defence League were also seeing clashing with pro-Palestinian
demonstrators. Some of them could be seen brandishing iron bars
and cans of pepper spray.
Firefighters and journalists discuss Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, which was shot down in eastern Ukraine
The US has pointedly criticised Russian arming of rebels in Ukraine as the world demanded answers over the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 by a suspected Russian-made missile, resulting in the death of all 298 people on board the civilian airliner.
The White House stopped short of directly blaming Russia for the plane’s destruction but linked its remarks on the disaster to the Kremlin’s support for separatists in Ukraine, urging Vladimir Putin’s government to stop inflaming the situation in the country and take "concrete steps" towards de-escalation.
The huge loss of life threatens to have wide-ranging and unpredictable consequences, coming just after the US imposed further sanctions on Russia for continuing to provide weapons to the rebels.
The former US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, made some of the most potent remarks in a television interview, saying there were strong indications Russian-backed militia were to blame and action was needed to "put [Vladimir] Putin on notice that he has gone too far and we are not going to stand idly by".
Clinton called for the EU to increase sanctions on Russia, while the Australian prime minister Tony Abbott demanded that Russia explain the disaster as it “now seems certain it’s been brought down by a Russian-supplied surface-to-air missile”.
The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, said it was too soon to make a decision on tougher sanctions. "The events with the plane, as far as I remember, were not even 24 hours ago and at the moment we need to sort out an independent investigation."
There were 173 Dutch nationals on board the plane, along with 44 Malaysians, 27 Australians, 12 Indonesians, nine passengers believed to be from the UK, four each from Germany and Belgium, three from the Philippines, one Canadian and one from New Zealand. The nationalities of 20 passengers have not yet been verified. A group of international HIV/Aids experts flying to Melbourne were among those killed.
The British foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, said: "We are working through passenger data, cross-checking it and referencing it to establish exactly the numbers and identities of those British nationals."
The Malaysian prime minister, Najib Razak, said the news marked “a tragic day in what has already been a tragic year for Malaysia”, referring to the earlier disappearance without a trace of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370. He said those responsible for tragedy the must be held responsible.
Flags were lowered to half-mast in the Netherlands and Australia.
The Dutch flag at half-mast at Schiphol airport Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
Kiev and Moscow have blamed each other for the disaster.
Putin ordered Russian military and civilian agencies to co-operate with any investigation but, according to a Kremlin statement, said the "state over whose territory this occurred bears responsibility for this awful tragedy."
The Ukrainian foreign minister, Pavlo Klimkin, said on Friday there was no chance the missile was of Ukrainian military origin. He said the Ukrainian army did not have such missiles in the area, and said none had been seized by separatist fighters in recent weeks.
The jet was flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur on Thursday when it was blown apart and fell in a shower of fiery wreckage over the village of Grabovo, part of the area controlled by pro-Russia separatists.
The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) said on Friday that separatists had agreed to provide assistance to those investigating the crash of the plane and would ensure safe access for international experts visiting the site.
Defence and security experts said the Russian-made Buk surface-to-air missile system, known to be in the hands of pro-Russia fighters in Ukraine, was most likely used.
The US vice-president, Joe Biden, said the plane appeared to have been "blown out of the sky", while the Ukrainian security services released an audio recording said to be rebel commanders discussing the fact that their forces were responsible with Russian officers.
The UN security council it is to meet on Friday as calls mount for an international response. “There is clearly a need for a full, transparent and international investigation,” said the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-Moon, sending his condolences to the victims’ families.
A Malaysian mother reacts after seeing her daughter's name on the list of passengers on board Malaysia Airlines MH17. Photograph: Edgar Su/Reuters
In Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia's transport minister Liow Tiong Lai stressed that MH17 was following "the right route on the right path" amid a barrage of questions from local and foreign reporters as to why Malaysia Airlines would have chosen to fly over a war zone. Qantas, the Australian carrier, said it had been steering clear of the area by 400 nautical miles for several months.
"It is many years that we have taken the same route and many other countries take the same route," he said. He stressed that some 15 of 16 Asia-Pacific Airlines fly "this route over Ukraine" and added: "European airlines also use the same route, and traverse the same airspace. In the hours before the incident, a number of other passenger aircraft from different carriers used the same route."
He also said that there had been "no last-minute instructions" given to the pilots to change the route.
The European air traffic control body, Eurocontrol, said Ukrainian authorities had banned aircraft from flying at 32,000ft or below and the doomed aircraft had been cruising above that, at 33,000ft – however this apparently still left it within range of the sophisticated surface-to-air weaponry that pro-Russia forces have been using recently to target Ukrainian military aircraft. All civilian flights have now been barred from eastern Ukraine.
The field next to the tiny hamlet was a scene of charred earth and twisted metal as shocked local people milled around the scene. Body parts belonging to the 298 on board were strewn around. The body of what appeared to be a young woman had been flung about 500m from the centre of the crash.
US government officials confirmed to media outlets that a surface-to-air missile brought down the plane. US intelligence was reportedly still working to determine the exact location from which the missile was fired, and whether it was on the Russian or the Ukrainian side of the border.
Rebels in the self-declared Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics have shot down several Ukrainian planes and helicopters in recent weeks. But they insisted they had no part in the downing of MH17, claiming instead that Ukrainian fire was responsible.
Ukraine's SBU security services released a recording, which could not immediately be verified, of what it said were rebel commanders saying they had shot down a plane and then discovering with horror it had been a civilian jet.
Ukraine security services recording said to reveal pro-Russia separatists admitting they shot down plane.
On the ground in Grabovo a strong smell of aviation fuel and burnt rubber hung in the air as dozens of pro-Russian separatist fighters milled around the area in which workers from the emergency services were sifting through the wreckage. A dozen fire engines were on the scene.
One local resident, Alexander, had been working in a field a few hundred metres from the crash site and thought the aircraft was going to fall on top of him. Another farmer said he was on his tractor when he heard a loud bang. "Then I saw the plane hit the ground and break in two – there was thick black smoke," he said.
In a conflict that has not been short of dreadful twists, this was by far the most shocking and most gruesome to date. The 298 people on board MH17 had no connection to the fighting – their international flight was simply travelling through airspace above the battle zone.
Malaysia Airlines announces the nationalities of those on board flight MH17.
Throughout the Ukraine conflict the versions of violent incidents provided by Kiev and the Donetsk rebels have diverged wildly, with each side blaming the other for loss of life and the shelling of residential areas.
Now, with such a huge and unexpected loss of life, the stakes are immeasurably higher, and both sides again rushed to claim the other was at fault.
Those blaming pro-Russia rebels for the attack pointed to a post on a social media site attributed to a top rebel commander which claimed to have downed a Ukrainian transport plane around the same time as the first reports of MH17's disappearance surfaced. The post was later deleted.
The US and EU have heavily criticised Russia for providing the separatists in eastern Ukraine with logistical and military support, leading to a new set of White House sanctions against Russian companies, introduced on Wednesday, as rhetoric coming out of both Washington and Moscow has led to talk of a new cold war. Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the Guardian that any allegations of Russian involvement in the MH17 crash were "stupidity".
He said the Kremlin would not make a further statement because "no one knows" who is responsible.
Asked about the possibility of further US sanctions, Peskov said he could not rule it out: "The United States has recently been conducting a very nonconstructive policy and their actions are very unpredictable," he said.
Putin, who on Thursday returned to Russia from a summit of the Brics nations in Brazil, informed Barack Obama about the incident.
"The Russian leader informed the US president of the report from air traffic controllers that the Malaysian plane had crashed on Ukrainian territory, which had arrived immediately before the phone call," said a statement released by the Kremlin.
According to the statement, the pair spent most of the conversation discussing the deterioration of US-Russian relations, and Putin expressed his "serious disappointment" over the latest round of US sanctions against Russian companies.
Later Putin chaired a meeting on the Russian economy which began with a minute's silence and laid the blame for the crash at Ukraine's door: "There is no doubt that the nation over whose airspace this happened bears responsibility for the terrible tragedy," he said.
David Cameron, the British prime minister, tweeted: "I'm shocked and saddened by the Malaysian air disaster. Officials from across Whitehall are meeting to establish the facts."
The crash came four months after another Malaysia Airlines flight, MH370, vanished on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board, two-thirds of them Chinese citizens. It has yet to be found despite a huge search.
Ukrainian president says shooting down of plane is a warning for the world on Russian aggression.
Igor Sutyagin, a Russian military specialist at the London-based Royal United Services Institute, agreed that the plane would almost certainly have been shot with a Buk, a vehicle-mounted missile system first developed in the Soviet era. The Malaysian aircraft,was beyond the range of Manpads – shoulder-launched missiles. Kalashnikov-carrying Russian sympathisers in Ukraine would not have had the expertise to fire them and would have needed either specialists who had "volunteered" their services from Russia or locally recruited specialists, he said, noting that the rebels had been firing at Ukrainian aircraft over the last week.
The Associated Press said one of its journalists had seen a similar launcher near the town of Snizhne earlier on Thursday.
Russia's state-owned Channel One avoided speculation of who might have been behind the plane crash in its first bulletins on the subject, while the Kremlin-friendly Life News, whose reporters were first on the scene, said it was likely to have been brought down by Ukrainian fire, claiming that the rebels did not have any missile systems with the capacity to down a plane at that altitude.
However a report on the website of Russian state television from late June described how the rebels in Donetsk had taken control of a Ukrainian missile defence facility that was equipped with Buk systems. The report said that the rebels planned to "defend the sky over Donetsk" using the missiles.
On Thursday afternoon a social media site attributed to Igor Strelkov, a Russian citizen who has emerged as the commander of rebel forces in Donetsk, announced that the rebels had shot down an An-26 Ukrainian transport plane, and also that there was "information about a second plane". The post was later removed.
Audio was circulated on social media, apparently released by Ukrainian security services, purporting to be an intercepted conversation of pro-Russia rebels confirming they had shot down a civilian jet.
The conversation is apparently between a group leader and his superior and suggests that they initially thought they had brought down a military aircraft but later realised their error.
The group leader, "Demon", tells his boss: "A plane has just been shot down. [It was] 'Miner's' group. It crashed outside Enakievo. Our men went to search for and photograph it. It's smouldering."
After his men apparently inspect the crash site, Demon reports back. "Cossacks from the Chernunkhino checkpoint shot down the plane. The plane disintegrated in mid-air … they found the first body. It's a civilian."
He carries on: "I mean. It's definitely a civilian aircraft."
His superior, nicknamed "Greek", asks him: "Were there many people?"
Demon replies: "A fuckton. The debris rained right into the yards."
Greek asks: "What's the aircraft?" and is told: "I haven't figured it out yet. I haven't reached the main section. I only looked at where the bodies began to fall. There are remains of chair mounts, the chairs, the bodies."
Greek asks: "Any weapons there?" and Demon says: "None at all. Civilian things, medical stuff, towels, toilet paper." "Any documents?" asks Greek, and Demon, perhaps realising what has just happened, replies: "Yes, an Indonesian student from Thomson university [in the US]." Additional reporting by Tania Branigan in Beijing, Ewen MacAskill in London, Paul Lewis in Washington and Warren Murray of Guardian Australia
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli troops pushed into Gaza Friday in a ground offensive that officials said could last up to two weeks, as the prime minister ordered the military to prepare for a "significantly" wider campaign.
The assault raised risks of a bloodier conflict amid rising Palestinian civilian casualties and the first Israeli military death — and brought questions of how far Israel will go to cripple Gaza's Hamas rulers.
Officially, the goal remains to destroy a network of tunnels militants use to infiltrate Israel and attack civilians. In its first day on the ground in Gaza, the military said it took up positions beyond the border, encountered little resistance from Hamas fighters and made steady progress in destroying the tunnels. Military officials said the quick work means that within a day or two, Israeli leaders may already have to decide whether to expand the operation.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had ordered the military to prepare for a "significant expansion" of the ground offensive.
"It is not possible to deal with tunnels only from the air. It needs to be done also from the ground," he told a special Cabinet meeting in Tel Aviv. "We chose to begin this operation after the other options were exhausted and with the understanding that without the operation, the price we will pay can be very high."
Frustrated by Hamas' refusal to accept an Egyptian-brokered truce agreement and the failure of a 10-day campaign of more than 2,000 airstrikes to halt relentless rocket fire on Israeli cities, Israel launched a ground offensive it had previously been reticent to undertake to further weaken Hamas militarily.
With calls from Israeli hard-liners to completely crush Hamas, it remains unclear how far Israel will go in an operation that has already seen 274 Palestinians killed in Gaza, a fifth of them children.
"It won't end that quickly," said Yitzhak Aharonovitch, Israel's minister of public security. "Anything can happen. If we need to keep going, we will keep going. We won't stop. We need quiet for the citizens of the south and the citizens of Israel."
The Israeli military said it had killed nearly 20 militants in exchanges of fire.
Gaza health officials said more than 30 Palestinians have been killed since the ground operation began, including three young siblings from the Abu Musallam family who were killed when a tank shell hit their home.
At the morgue, 11-year-old Ahmed's face was blackened by soot, and he and his 14-year-old sister, Walaa, and 16-year-old brother, Mohammed, were wrapped in white burial shrouds. Their father, Ismail, said the three were sleeping when the shell struck and he had to dig them out from under the rubble.
Israel says it is going to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties and blames them on Hamas, accusing it of firing from within residential neighborhoods and using its civilians as "human shields." On Thursday, the U.N. refugee agency for Palestinians, UNRWA, said a routine check in one of its vacant Gaza schools found about 20 hidden rockets and called on militants to respect the "sanctity and integrity" of U.N. property.
Critics say it is the intense fire itself in such a densely populated area that leads to the deaths of innocent civilians. The U.N. children's agency, UNICEF, said at least 59 — or one in five — of the Palestinians killed children were under the age of 18. UNRWA said 40,000 Palestinians were seeking refuge in 34 of its shelters throughout the Gaza Strip.
Most countries have expressed support for Israel's right to defend itself, while urging it to minimize civilian deaths in its ground assault. President Barack Obama spoke with Netanyahu Friday and expressed his concern "about the risks of further escalation and the loss of more innocent life."
The operation also brought Israel its first military casualty. The circumstances behind the death of Staff Sgt. Eitan Barak, 20, were not made clear: Hamas's military wing said it ambushed Israeli units in the northern town of Beit Lahiya, but Israeli media said Barak was likely killed by friendly fire. The army said a number of soldiers were also wounded. Earlier in the week, an Israeli civilian died from Palestinian mortar fire and several others have been wounded.
"The ground offensive does not scare us and we pledge to drown the occupation army in Gaza mud," Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said in a statement.
Israeli public opinion strongly supports the offensive after days of unrelenting rocket fire from Gaza and years of southern Israeli residents living under the threat. Gaza militants have fired more than 1,500 rockets at Israel over the past 11 days, and rocket fire continued across Israel Friday.
The order to launch the ground operation was triggered not by the rocket fire, but by a Hamas attempt to infiltrate Israel on Thursday, when 13 armed militants sneaked through a tunnel from Gaza and were killed by an airstrike as they emerged inside Israel.
The military, which has already mobilized more than 50,000 reservists, said paratroopers had uncovered eight tunnel access points across the Gaza Strip and engaged in several gun battles with Hamas militants who ambushed them.
Israeli forces are expected to spend a day or two staking ground within two miles (three kilometers) of the border in the north, east and south of the Gaza Strip. Then, they are expected to begin destroying tunnels, an operation that could take up to two weeks. Tanks, infantry and engineering forces were operating inside Gaza, where the military said it targeted rocket launchers, tunnels and more than 100 other targets.
Hamas has survived Israeli offensives in the past, including a major three-week ground operation in January 2009 and another weeklong air offensive in 2012, but in each case the militant group recovered. It now controls an arsenal of thousands of rockets, some long range and powerful, and it has built a system of underground bunkers.
But Hamas is weaker than it was during the previous two offensives, with little international or even regional support from its main allies, Turkey and Qatar. Protests against the offensive took place Friday in Turkey, Jordan and the West Bank.
Egypt, which has been pushing for a cease-fire, is at odds with Hamas' conditions, which include a lifting of the siege of Gaza and completely open borders into the Sinai — where Egypt is already fighting Islamic extremists.
___
Heller reported from Jerusalem. Associated Press writers Ian Deitch and Tia Goldenberg and Yousur Alhlou in Jerusalem and Karin Laub in Gaza City contributed to this report.
18 Julai 2014 - Israel telah melancarkan operasi darat di Semenanjung Gaza petang ini untuk menghentikan serangan roket, menurut tentera.
Keadaan ini menjadi lebih buruk di Gaza, manakala ruangan kereta kebal memasuki kawasan di dalam peningkatan utama serangan, Gaza terus menghadapi serangan berat. Selepas 'gencatan senjata kemanusiaan' agak tenang yang berakhir pada pukul 3 petang hari ini, Israel telah membunuh sepuluh Palestin dan telah memperbaharui serangan udara di seluruh Gaza.
Sekitar 10:00 malam ini Perdana Menteri Israel Netanyahu Sarakham mengumumkan permulaan serangan darat di Gaza yang bertujuan untuk memusnahkan infrastruktur roket melancarkan penentangan Palestin.
Media Israel melaporkan bahawa Netanyahu diberikan kebenaran untuk tentera Israel memulakan operasi tanah malam ini. Mereka juga telah mengisytiharkan sempadan utara dan timur Gaza dengan Israel ditutup zon ketenteraan di mana walaupun wartawan dilarang.
Laman web Ynet Israel melaporkan bahawa infantri, perisai, kejuruteraan, meriam dan perisikan tentera bekerja dalam kerjasama dengan laut dan udara, dengan bantuan dari Bet Shin dan pasukan keselamatan lain, dan diterajui oleh Perintah Selatan.
Mereka terus mengatakan bahawa Angkatan pendudukan Israel merancang untuk mengambil alih kawasan di Gaza dan bekerja untuk mencari dan memusnahkan pangkalan rintangan Palestin di kawasan-kawasan ini. Tentera itu juga telah disediakan peringkat tambahan beroperasi, termasuk mendapatkan semua jalan ke pantai Gaza.
Pada masa ini terdapat laporan pertempuran di Beit Lahya, utara Gaza, dan di timur Khan Younis, selatan Gaza, antara penentangan Palestin dan tentera Israel. Yang terakhir ini menyerang melalui udara dan tanah, dengan kapal terbang tentera dan kereta kebal. Terdapat juga melaporkan serangan berterusan timur Rafah, di sebelah lapangan terbang yang musnah, dan beberapa kecederaan serius akibat serangan berat. Sesetengah sumber melaporkan mungkin ada sudah menjadi beberapa mangsa.
